A normal user's look into the world of 3D Stereo Technologies

I’m sure that there are quite a lot of people that are eagerly anticipating the release of the Gran Turismo 5 (GT5) driving simulator for the PlayStation 3 console and are having very high expectations from the game. And with the release date tomorrow, 24th of November for Europe and North America and 25th for Japan and Australia that waiting is almost over, but the big question is if the game will really live up to all the expectations. And while I’m not much of a console gamer, but having played earlier games from the series at some point in time, am wondering more about something else that comes with the new GT5 and that is the stereo 3D support that the game will offer as an additional feature. However it is not very encouraging that Sony is not talking a lot about the stereo 3D support in the game before its release, it is just mentioned as some additional feature present in the game and that is it. But since Sony still doesn’t have a lot of games that support stereo 3D mode and the already available ones are far from being a top titles that can drive people to buy a 3D HDTV, because they want to get the best possible experience, I’m still having high hopes for the GT5…

Now, I still haven’t seen the game or tried the stereo 3D mode in it, but I’ll try it out after the official launch, however I already have a few reports from people that were able to get an early feel of the game and the 3D support. And their comments were not very positive, raging from the more moderate that the game is not impressive at all in stereo 3D mode, to the fact that the game is not working properly in S3D and not very well designed to take advantage of the stereo 3D mode. These things of course need to be verified and you are welcome to share your own experience with the game in 3D mode below, but I’m starting to get the feeling that Sony has rushed the game and the developers did not have enough time to fully implement the stereo 3D support and make the game look and feel great when played on a 3D HDTV. So I suppose that GT5 will not be a reason enough for me to actually buy a PS3 console just yet, to be able to play and test games in stereo 3D on it too and I’ll continue waiting for the killer 3D game for the PS3 to be released, but lets wait a bit more and see for sure.

If I’m getting the right premonition here it would mean that the PC will still remain the best platform to play games in stereo 3D for a quite a while which is a good news for all PC gamers out there that are going to upgrade to stereoscopic 3D capable hardware. The not so good thing here is that without having “the Avatar” of 3D gaming available yet, things with the adoption of 3D HDTVs are a general technology will not pick up the pace due to the general lack of 3D content, besides games of course. And another thing that I’m not too happy about is the fact that game developers are developing games for consoles and then just do a quick and crappy port of the game for PC users. And these ports don’t take advantage of the latest generation of graphic capabilities available on the PC, are not optimized for best performance, come with maximum frame limits, lack important features and good enough user control in terms of the settings, don’t have properly implemented controls and so on and so on. Two recent examples are the Call of Duty: Black Ops and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2010 that could’ve been much better from the start if they were optimized and properly ported to PC, instead of us having to wait for patches and updates that might not even come out.